Veep Reality Check: "Fundraiser"

With Veep premiering last night on HBO, starring Julie Louis-Dreyfus as an oft-we humiliated No. 2, we thought we’d ask a real-life vice-presidential staffer how realistic the portrayal is — and what life is like orbiting around the country’s second-most-powerful person. GQ’s Reid Cherlin, a former White House staffer in the Obama administration, chatted after the show with Jeff Nussbaum, who served as a speechwriter for Vice Presidents Biden and Gore and is now a partner at the firm West Wing Writers in D.C.

Reid: Hey Jeff. Thanks for sharing your perspective with us.

Jeff: Happy to do it.

Reid: You worked as a speechwriter for two VPs and have seen a lot of VPing going down. Overall, how realistic did you think the show was?

Jeff: Yes, I tell people that my career is an illustration in how to get almost to the top. I enjoyed the show, and I guess I would say that it was less realistic when it came to capturing the gestalt of the VP’s existence, and more realistic in capturing some of the personality types and exchanges. To me, the thing about the VP that captures the painful "almost-ness" of the office is that the VP travels like the president, is staffed like the president, is (frequently) treated like the President...but isn’t the president.

Reid: Right.

Jeff: So you’re not really going to see a vice president dropping by some senator’s office on a whim. And then getting ignored by that senator.

Reid: Yes, was just going to ask about that scene. And from what I recall, the VP motorcade and retinue makes a pretty big splash. Plus, Hill types tend to like being around matter no matter what. But I’m interested: Can you expand on that a little more? Is there something about acting "just like the president" but NOT being the president that is...well, comical? Sad? Weird?

Jeff: It’s surreal. John Adams captured it best when he wrote, "I am vice president. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything." The entire infrastructure that moves with, and travels with, and staffs the VP is there so that he (or in this case she) can become the president at a moment’s notice. But the likelihood of that happening is slim. So instead, you get this weird situation where the vice president is treated as a sort of glorified staffer/validator for the president. And that’s what struck me as most real about the show, the occasionally patronizing tone that presidential staffers sometimes take with the vice president.

Reid: Right. There’s a memorable bit where Dan, the Senate staffer, stops the VP in the hallway of the senate office building and, unprompted, offers two very D.C.-sounding criticisms of her strategy in her losing presidential campaign. It gets at the armchair quarterback thing that is so prevalent in Washington. Every schlemiel is Karl Rove when he ties his tie in the morning. But anyway, in your experience, how does the VP usually deal with those kind of indignities?

Jeff: When I worked in the Senate, we would have a saying: "Fundraisers aren’t focus groups." The point was that whatever someone tells you over dinner, or at a fundraiser, or, yes, in the hallway, is not always the best political advice.

Reid: That is one of the problems, right? In a democracy, everyone is allowed to think they know best. And then when you get to the almost-very-top, the vice presidency, suddenly you’re making zero decisions, and yet at the same time subjected to all sorts of commentary from whoever wants to say something.

Jeff: But when you see a vice president get offered advice, whether it’s ridiculous or sublime, the painful thing is that they’re almost always solicitous of it. Here’s a story: I listened in on a fundraiser with a vice president, I won’t say which one it was (and donors feel particularly entitled to give advice, perhaps given that their success in other fields has put them in a position to be in the room with the VP), and the VP answered questions for 40 minutes on foreign policy. At the end of this event, the host got up and said something to the effect of, "Before this, I basically thought you were a clown. But I can’t tell you how impressive that was." How is a vice president supposed to react to that?

Reid: Ben & Jerry’s and 30 Rock, maybe? That’s amazing.

Jeff: Right? It’s a brutal job.

Reid: So along those lines: in the show, which we grant is farcical, the entire theme is that the VP has no idea what’s going on, is kept totally in the dark, and is basically flailing around at the mercy of an unseen president. Is that how it feels? What about when "the White House" tells the VP that she has to cut all that stuff out of her speech?

Jeff: "Pencil fucking" does indeed happen. And, oh, how I wish I had invented that term. Because we all simply repeated the bureaucratic mantra, "We have some edits from the West Wing." Which reminds me, the show avoids getting at one of the common OVP (that’s Office of the vice president) facts of life by having one character be designated as the West Wing’s hatchet man. In reality, the entire VP staff is loyal to the VP, but also feels that they have to answer to the president. It can lead to a situation in which they’re serving two masters, and trying to cater to the best interests of each.

Reid: There’s obviously a dynamic in the show in which Selena has a dependence/disgust thing going on with Gary, her indispensable aide. It’s funny in the show, but have you see a dynamic like that in practice?

Jeff: Totally, I loved that piece of it, and not just because I’m a huge Tony Hale fan. But there’s this dynamic that I’ve only really seen in Washington where people hitch their entire lives to a politician, do everything for them—indeed, are indispensable to them—and are treated with occasional appreciation, but more often some mix of tolerance and disdain.

Reid: Maybe because a high-powered pol doesn’t want to think of herself as dependent on someone to sweeten her coffee or carry sharpies for her--even though she is. But continue...

Jeff: Exactly. These are powerful people, who don’t want to be reminded—though they need to be—of the names they can’t remember. The other scene that felt real was the temper tantrum the VP throws when everything was going wrong. Again, I can’t imagine doing a job where every moment of my life was scrutinized. But these guys do. Which leaves precious few opportunities to blow off steam, especially when things are going bad. You can’t blow up at a public event, or a political meeting, or your spouse. So your staff gets the brunt of it. I spent a little time working for a member of Congress, where the door to her office opened up to three desks in a row, where three assistants sat. If the first was at her desk, she got yelled at. If she wasn’t, the person at the second desk took the hit. It actually looked like one of those landing craft in Saving Private Ryan: the door opens, and whoever is closest to it takes the first bullet.

Reid: Right.

Jeff: Another scene that felt real was the moment Selena Meyer realizes that she’s actually used the word "retard" aloud. This is why so many politicians sound like they’re listening to themselves in their heads before they actually say something. Because they are.

Reid: Right, totally. Speaking of offices, though: you and I worked together a long time ago in the Senate...

Jeff: It was a long time ago. My hairline is quite a ways from where it was then.

Reid: And I thought I’d ask: on just a very surface level, how realistic do you think the sets and stuff looked? The depictions of the Hill interiors? The VP staff quarters?

Jeff: I was really surprised to see how right they got a lot of that stuff. The Eisenhower Ecutive Office Building looked like it actually does. They even had "jumbos" on the wall, which are rotating official photos of the president and vice president. Even the reception in the Senate they got right. When the scene opened, I said, "Wow, that’s the Mansfield Room." And the Senator’s office, that looked just like the Hart building. The only thing that wasn’t right is that every vice president since Mondale, I believe, has mostly worked out of an office in the West Wing. So it’s really rare that you get a situation where staff is in one big bullpen outside the VP’s office. Instead, the VP has two or three staff members outside his office in the West Wing, and everyone else comes over when summoned. By the way, all of this VP chat is getting Google’s targeted ads to start telling me about some band called the VIPs Band.

Reid: Oops—sorry! But just to explain, the Eisenhower Ecutive Office Building (usually referred to as the EEOB) is the ornate, columned, wedding-cake-looking building whose exteriors you see several times in establishment shots in the show. It’s inside the White House fence and it’s where the vast majority of White House staffers work, even though it’s not part of the actual mansion, as the West Wing is. They’re divided only by a driveway, but that driveway can feel very wide at times. Which is what the show is all about. With that, even though I have lots of questions, I guess I will let you get back to your life...and your hairline. Thanks sharing your reaction!

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